


walk with you through everything

by idrilka



Series: for all of the perfect things that i doubt [9]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Career Ending Injuries, Domestic, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:23:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5962219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/pseuds/idrilka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jack retires from the NHL, he takes his time to heal, in more ways than one. Bitty is there for him every step of the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	walk with you through everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catc10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catc10/gifts).



> Dear Recipient, happy Valentine's Day!  
> I loved writing this fic for you, and I really, really hope you enjoy reading it. :) You asked for domestic fluff, and domesticity is one of those things that I absolutely adore when it comes to writing, so I had a lot of fun with this story. I can only hope you have fun with it as well. :)  
> Huge thanks to all the people who supported me in writing the story, you're the best cheerleaders I could ask for. Also, huge _huge_ thanks to Codie for beta-reading.  
>  Title from Glen Hansard's _Song of Good Hope_.

Jack retires from the NHL at the age of thirty-three, his career cut short by an aggravated ACL injury. He retires with three Cup rings under his belt and the C on his sweater, and when they raise his jersey up to the rafters, he has Bitty to his left and his father to his right.

He cries after he leaves the ice, and it’s a messy, undignified affair, his eyes red and his nose runny as he looks up into the bathroom mirror, his hands braced against the sink. 

He can hear the door open and close, and when he turns back, he expects to see Bitty, but instead, his father is standing in the bathroom entrance, looking at Jack like his heart is breaking. 

“Oh, Jack,” he says as he takes in the state of him, and then he pulls Jack into a crushing hug that lasts until Jack’s silent tears give way to dry-heaving.

“This is not the end of everything,” his dad says then, looking Jack straight in the eyes. “Even though it might feel that way right now. It’s just…the beginning of something else. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know?”

Jack nods, feeling like he’s eighteen all over again, but he’s so much more than that now, too, and that’s the thing that makes all the difference. He can now look his father in the face and know that Bob is _right_ , even if Jack has a hard time coming to terms with the reality of that at the moment.

So maybe he’s not okay right now, but he is _better_.

.

PT is all sweat and tears, and gritted teeth, but at the end of it all, Jack can still skate. He can’t skate the way he used to, but he can still lace up his skates and glide across the ice while the rest of the world seems still and silent, save for the soothing scrape of blades against the pristine surface of the rink. 

It grounds him, the way skating always used to, and most days, it doesn’t even bother him that he’s not holding a hockey stick in his hands.

They stay in Providence until Jack is done with physio and his therapist gives him the all-clear. 

They buy a house in Montreal after that. 

The truth is—Jack would love to stay with the organization, but he doesn’t think he could handle being around the team on a daily basis right now, the wound too fresh even though the damaged tissue around his knee is nothing but a fading scar. 

He knows the doors will remain open, though, and so they don’t sell the Providence apartment, hoping to return one day, once Jack has healed on the inside as much as he has on the outside. 

So this—leaving all of that life behind, this is the hard part. But everything else—going back home, being with Bitty, that has always been easy.

They’ve been through a lot to get to that point, but now they fit around each other effortlessly, comfortably, with an ease that only nearly a decade of falling asleep next to one person can bring, and Bitty has been there for Jack every step of the way. He knows Jack the way no one else ever has, because this time, Jack _let_ him, and it says a lot about how far he’s come since that time he spent in a hospital bed, looking at the off-white walls and not seeing anything except for his own failure.

The house they buy is big and full of light, and Jack can see the roof of his parents’ house from the first-floor balcony. There’s a big patio opening out onto the garden, and a huge kitchen that makes Bitty gasp when they walk in during the tour with the realtor, and Jack immediately knows he’s going to buy this house, because he’s made a habit of making Bitty happy long before they got together and he doesn’t intend to stop now. 

“Aren’t you gonna carry me over the threshold?” Bitty teases once Jack signs the check, and Jack laughs under his breath, his fingers ghosting over the plain golden band on his ring finger absentmindedly. 

“Once just wasn’t enough for you, eh?” he asks, hip-checking Bitty, who grabs Jack’s forearm to keep himself from stumbling. 

Bitty laughs. “Well, if you call that _carrying_ ,” he says, then pushes up on his tiptoes and kisses Jack.

It’s been eight years, and kissing Bitty is still as exhilarating as it had been when they first got together. 

Maybe it means something—and Jack has trained himself out of believing in fate, but maybe it means that it was always supposed to end like this: Jack, with Bitty, happy and more _whole_ than he ever remembers being. 

They move in early August, and Jack pretends he doesn’t notice the way Bitty cries on the plane, because he knows that Bitty hates it when people see him cry.

They settle in slowly, gradually getting accustomed to the new place. Bitty works from home most of the time, and Jack still has his professional obligations with the sponsors and his charity work, and the organizations he represents, so he’s gone from time to time, but even with all that, he finds himself far less busy than he used to be. 

It’s something he started to get accustomed to during the months he spent on long-term IR, trying to get back on his feet after the second surgery, when he knew the chances that he’d be going back to playing hockey professionally were slim to none. But it still hits him over and over again, that he doesn’t have practice to get to, that he won’t be spending half of the season on the road, sleeping in nondescript hotel rooms that start to blend together after a while, listening to his roommate’s soft snoring, that he won’t have to play back-to-back games that used to leave him bone-tired but satisfied in a way very few things could.

He can’t work out as much as he used to, but he still sets up a gym in the basement and spends some time on a treadmill every day, keeping in shape because that’s second nature to him by now, and he has no idea how _not_ to do it.

Still, he tries not to overexert himself, because he’s not stupid and he knows that it’s a miracle he can still skate at all, so he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life on crutches just because he couldn’t fucking deal.

Above everything, though, Jack has always been a creature of habit (some less deadly than others), so he still wakes up at five a.m. and lies next to Bitty for a long time, with his arm wrapped around Bitty’s waist as he breathes and tries to remind himself that he doesn’t need to get up for an early workout. 

He usually leaves the bed before Bitty wakes up and goes downstairs to make coffee, then boots up his laptop and reads the news until Bitty finally stumbles down to the kitchen some time later. 

It’s a routine—granted, it’s a different routine than the one Jack had been used to for years, but maybe he can get used to this one, too.

.

“You should get a dog,” his mom says one day over lunch. His dad is away on business, so Bitty has invited her over to eat, and she’s been methodically destroying whatever salad Bitty prepared to go with the salmon—something with fruit and arugula, sweet and just a bit acidic to balance out the sweetness. “You could run together in the morning and leave Eric to sleep in peace.”

Bitty laughs. “Hey, I’m not _that_ bad,” he says, feigning offence, and Jack’s mom smothers a smile. 

And the thing is—Jack has always liked the idea of pets, but with him away for so long, sometimes weeks at a time, it just never seemed like the sensible thing to do. 

(He remembers being fourteen and desperately wanting a dog, but he also knew better than to ask, because back then, his life revolved around hockey and not much else, and there was no place for anything other than ambition and steely resolve to be the best he could be.)

Now, though, there’s nothing stopping him. Stopping _them_.

When Jack asks, later, Bitty’s entire face lights up. 

“I _love_ dogs,” he says, grinning up at Jack. “The bigger, the better, y’know?”

In the end, they get a Samoyed puppy that’s more fluff than anything else, and spend the entire first day trying to get her accustomed to the new place—she’s shy and timid, and scared of the stairs that lead to the basement, but by the time the evening comes, she falls asleep lying on Jack’s chest on the couch, exhausted, and when he lifts his hand to run his fingers through her fur, she just sighs softly and presses her nose against Jack’s collarbone, and whines a little at the back of her throat, like she’s particularly content. 

Jack falls in love on the spot.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Bitty says when he comes into the living room, and he presses his palm to his mouth like he’s about to cry. “Don’t move, this is going on my Instagram.”

Jack laughs softly, trying not to wake Charlie up, then reaches out to Bitty, pulls him closer and then down for a kiss. They miss by a bit, and Bitty kisses the corner of Jack’s mouth instead, laughing, then shushes himself, looking down at the sleeping puppy. 

“I’m glad you’re better, Jack,” he says then, and there is so much fondness in his voice that even now, after all these years, Jack can’t help but feel stunned. “I know this is not what you wanted, but you’ve been looking a lot happier lately, and I’m just…I’m glad.”

And Bitty is right—it’s not how Jack imagined his future, it’s not how Jack imagined his retirement from the NHL, but also this—the life they have carved out for themselves—it’s everything Jack has ever wanted, at the end of the day, and he can be happy with just that; another testament to how far Jack has come.

“Yeah,” Jack says at last, smiling up at Bitty, and it’s genuine and real. “Yeah, me too.”

.

Sometimes his body hurts with the coming change of weather. 

It’s true that he has asked a lot of it over the years, and he remembers the way his dad used to talk about his own body, like it failed him somehow somewhere along the way, like all the years of grueling training suddenly caught up to him the moment he stopped moving at the deadly pace professional hockey demands from its players, and Jack is not there yet—still too young—but he thinks he understands better now.

So there are mornings when his knee feels stiff and he needs to spend more time in bed in the morning until he’s sure he can get up without causing himself additional pain. On these days, he doesn’t work out and doesn’t skate; instead, he curls up around Bitty and closes his eyes, his breathing evening out as he slowly falls back asleep, just for a little while. On these days, Bitty wakes him up with kisses pressed to Jack’s temples, and with warm hands cupping the curve of Jack’s jaw, and Jack lets himself _be_ , just for a moment. 

On other days, when he doesn’t hurt all over, he runs with Charlie before breakfast. She’s growing at a rapid pace, and she loves the early morning runs, when it’s just her on a leash and Jack in his running gear, and the stretch of concrete in front of them. 

By the time he comes back, Bitty is usually up already and making breakfast for the two of them. Sometimes, when Jack’s dad is out of town, Jack stops by his parents’ house on his way back and picks up his mom to join them for breakfast, and they walk the rest of the way home, just to be welcomed by the smell of freshly-brewed coffee. 

Sometimes on the weekend, when neither of them has any pressing matters to attend to, they take a slow breakfast on the patio, with croissants, and blueberry pancakes, and crêpes, and fruit salad, and strong, black coffee in small cups, and then lounge about for a while, reading or browsing social media while Charlie sleeps soundly at the feet of Jack’s chair.

Most days, it’s just the slow pace of everyday life, but that’s enough.

.

They learned how to miss each other a long time ago, when Jack spent more time away than he did at home, and they know how to deal with loneliness when it’s miles stretching between them and nothing but their voices on the phone, late at night.

This time, when Jack comes home after five days away on a Hockey Talks-related business trip, it’s late and he’s exhausted, and his clothes smell like recycled air, but he almost races up the stairs to their bedroom, leaving his luggage in the hall by the stairs. The door has been left ajar and when he opens it, he sees that Bitty has fallen asleep with the light on, his phone lost somewhere in the duvet. 

Jack quickly showers and changes into his sleeping pants, brushes his teeth. When he slips under the covers, Bitty stirs. 

“Hey,” he says, rubbing his eyes, his entire face lighting up. “You’re back.”

Then he surges up to kiss Jack, and it’s the best feeling, coming home.

“Missed you,” Jack says, almost kissing back, his lips hovering millimeters over Bitty’s mouth, his hand cupping the nape of Bitty’s neck as he pulls him closer.

“Missed you too.” Bitty sits up, suddenly much more alert than he was just a moment ago, and he brushes his hand over Jack’s chest and down his abs.

“Oh, so that’s how it is?” Jack teases, then licks his lips as Bitty’s hand slips past the elastic.

“Mm,” Bitty says as he straddles Jack and presses a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “That’s exactly how it is.”

Suddenly, Jack feels wide awake. 

The feeling of Bitty’s fingers closed around Jack’s dick is familiar, and Jack would know his touch anywhere, the way their lips fit together, the way their bodies recognize each other instinctively, the way they melt around each other, soft and unguarded. 

They kiss, hot and open-mouthed, more of a desperate press of lips rather than a proper kiss, and they keep breathing each other’s air as Jack reaches around Bitty to tug the fabric of his shorts down and wrap his palm around him, match the rhythm set by Bitty’s hand. 

It doesn’t take them long, and it’s fast, and rough, and a little desperate, and when Jack comes, it’s with his face tucked into the crook of Bitty’s neck, his lips pressed to Bitty’s skin, feeling the rapid thread of his pulse as he follows Jack a moment later, leaving a mess all over Jack’s hand. 

He sounds winded as he slowly comes down from his orgasm, and then he laughs, breathless, hiding his face in the place where Jack’s shoulder meets his neck.

Jack has always loved making Bitty laugh in bed. 

He’s always loved coming back to him.

“How was your flight?” Bitty asks eventually, reaching to the bedside table for tissues, then tosses one to Jack while he cleans himself up. “Sorry, I was trying to stay up, but I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“You know I don’t mind. Besides, you looked tired,” Jack says as he balls up the tissue and throws it across the room into the en-suite trashcan. “And the flight was okay, mostly. There was a fussy baby, but she fell asleep somewhere over Saskatchewan.”

He stifles a yawn, and Bitty laughs softly, then presses a kiss to Jack’s temple. “Go to sleep, _lord_. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Jack falls asleep almost immediately after they’ve turned off the lights, but before he does, there’s a moment when Bitty snuggles up against him and mumbles a quiet _I love you_ into the crook of Jack’s neck, and this, right here—this is everything.

.

He’s lacing up his skates when the door to his dad’s private rink opens, and Jack expects to see one of his parents or maybe Bitty, who joins him sometimes when he can find it in himself to get up early, but when he turns around to look over his shoulder from his place on the bench, he sees Coach Lapointe, older and thinner than he used to be back when Jack coached peewee under him. 

“Alicia told me I’d find you here,” he says, and he sits down next to Jack on the bench, pats him on the knee in a way that’s reassuring instead of condescending. “I heard about what happened. I’m really sorry, son.”

Jack shrugs. “That’s just the reality of the game, right? These things can happen to anyone. I’m good, though, Coach. I had a good run.”

“I’ll say,” Coach Lapointe says, and he’s laughing. “You matched your dad for Cup rings, that’s nothing to sneeze at.” He looks down at Jack’s half-laced skates. “You still skate, huh? You ever play any one-on-one anymore?”

Jack shrugs again, but this time, he’s smiling. “Sometimes, when dad’s around. Not much, though. I’m just…I’m lucky that I can still skate at all.”

Coach Lapointe nods slowly, like he’s considering something. “You ever think of coming round to the rink?” he asks, and Jack knows exactly which rink he means. 

“What, are you offering me a job?” Jack laughs quietly. “ _Again_?”

Coach Lapointe waves a hand. “I don’t think you need the peanuts I could pay you, boy,” he says, amused. “But I think the kids would love that, if you could stop by sometime. And remember Caron? Well, he’s assistant coach now. Boy could never quite cut it in the juniors, had a bad concussion the year before the draft, and he stopped playing after that. But he’s always been a damn good player, with a damn good head for strategy.”

It’s been a long time since Jack last thought about the kids he coached in peewee in any serious capacity, but he can still feel the gratitude towards Coach Lapointe for taking a chance on him when no one else would. 

“I’m just saying, Jack,” Coach Lapointe continues, “the offer is there. If you ever feel like coming by, just let me know. Caron still tells stories about you to the kids, and they adore you, even though you never came to play for the Habs. But I think they’ve forgiven you for that.”

Jack smiles, looking down at the half-unlaced skates, and nods. “I’d love that. Can I bring Eric round, though? He likes kids a lot, and kids tend to like him even more.”

“Of course.” Coach Lapointe gets up from the bench. “I should probably be going, I was just supposed to come in for a second, since I was already in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d come see you personally rather than call. It was so good to see you, Jack. You’ve done so good. I always believed you had it in you.”

After the door closes behind Coach Lapointe, Jack sits on the bench, motionless, for a very long time, his elbows braced on his knees, taking it all in. It means a lot, coming from Coach Lapointe, who saw Jack at his lowest, fresh out of rehab and unsure about anything and everything.

After a long while, he finishes lacing up his skates and gets onto the ice, where he skates slow, lazy circles around the rink, trying to clear his head. 

He’d gone to a sports therapist, after the second injury, back when they told him he would probably not be going back to playing hockey professionally, and it was still like pulling teeth, some days, but other days, it was so much easier than the first time round. Jack still remembers how much he’d hated going to therapy in the very beginning, how he’d resented the idea of another person poking around his head, because it was _private_ , and he did not want to share what it felt like to live inside his own mind with anyone.

It was easier now, though, like falling into a familiar rhythm, and he still didn’t really _like_ it, but he _needed_ it, and he realized that, and maybe that made all the difference.

He remembers how angry he’d been at first, after rehab—angry at himself, at his parents, at the entire world; coaching the kids helped with some of that, gave him some semblance of purpose after he royally fucked up his own life, gave him people who needed him and relied on him not to fuck up again, and that—that helped.

He’s been skating for a while when his mother comes in to stand by the edge of the rink, leaning against a post. 

“Has Coach Lapointe stopped by?” she asks when Jack comes to an abrupt stop in front of her. “He came by the house earlier.”

Jack nods. “Yeah,” he says. “He wanted me to come visit the kids at the rink. Apparently Caron is assistant coach now.”

His mother looks at him with scrutiny. “And what did you say?”

Jack shrugs.

“I said yes.”

.

There are pictures on the walls at the front desk, and Bitty points to one of them, then elbows Jack in the side. 

“Look,” he says, “it’s you.”

Sure enough, there’s a picture of Jack, his hair still short after he got a buzzcut in rehab, nothing left of that soft, always slightly too-long hair that curled at his temples and behind his ears. He looks stern in the picture, stern and worn out, and he looks thin, for how much he worked out in between therapy sessions. 

There’s a row of about a dozen kids in front of him, in full hockey gear, grinning at the camera. A few of them are playing in the league right now, a few more are getting the necessary experience in the minors. It was a good crop of kids, overall. 

“Hi, Coach,” someone behind him says, and when Jack turns on his heel, he finds himself face to face with a tall, blond guy, broad in the shoulders and smiling widely. Jack recognizes him immediately.

“Caron,” he says and smiles back. “Good to see you.”

He introduces Bitty, and Caron leads them to the staff locker room. They talk a little on the way and then while they’re changing, which leaves Jack with the distinct impression that Caron is a better coach than he was a hockey player, and he was a pretty damn good one to begin with. He clearly loves working with the kids and understands what they need to progress and how to get them there. 

“We have a really great group this season,” he says, switching back to English for Bitty’s benefit, even though his French has improved a lot since they moved. “You ever think of going back to coaching?”

Jack finishes lacing up his skates and moves on to taping his stick. 

“The organization offered me to stay on as an assistant coach, but—” Jack trails off, making sure the handle of his stick is taped properly, then moves on to the blade. 

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Caron says, shaking his head. “I almost turned down this job when Coach Lapointe first asked.”

By the time they skate out, the kids are already on the ice, getting warmed up, and when Jack touches the surface of the rink, his pads on and his stick in his hands, it’s like he never left. 

Bitty is right there next to him, no pads but with his skates on, and he laughs when Jack says, “So how about that checking practice, eh?”

“In your dreams, Jack Zimmermann,” Bitty says. “In your dreams.”

It feels a little like a Christmas skate in the beginning—the kids chase around the ice while Jack skates shoulder to shoulder with Bitty, holding hands. Some of the younger boys look shy and intimidated by Jack’s presence, but he knows that Bitty always has a way to put children at ease, and this time it’s no different. By the time the warm-ups are over, there’s a small group of boys talking to Bitty by the boards, and when Jack skates over and ruffles his hair, they laugh.

It feels good to skate again with other people, to hold a stick in his hand and chase the puck, even though by the end of the practice Jack can feel his knee throbbing with a dull pain. 

“Jack, you okay?” Bitty asks once Jack comes out of the showers and slowly stretches his leg, sitting on the bench in the staff locker room. 

“It’s fine,” Jack says, still riding the endorphin rush from earlier, but it doesn’t feel like anything is wrong. Maybe just a bit strained. “I’m gonna take it easy for a few days, if that makes you feel better.”

Bitty crosses the room and sits down on the bench next to Jack, then presses a kiss to Jack’s cheek. 

“It does,” he says. “You know I worry. One of the ways I’m just like my mama.”

Bitty drives them home, despite Jack’s protests, and it starts to rain on their way back. By the time the main gate closes behind them, the rain has turned into a downpour, and they race all the way from the garage to the house, but they still get drenched. 

Bitty laughs, looking at Jack’s hair, plastered to his forehead, and Jack laughs, too, before peeling off his soaked jacket and kissing Bitty right in the middle of the main hall. 

“Hot shower and coffee?” he asks, because he knows how rain in Montreal always makes Bitty feel cold to the bone. 

“Yeah, but you’re getting in with me, mister,” Bitty says, then pulls him in the direction of the downstairs bathroom. 

They spend a slow afternoon on the couch, reading and browsing Netflix, Charlie curled up next to them, with her head resting on Jack’s thigh. 

“It was good, you know,” Jack says, “to be back out there. It felt good.”

Bitty looks up from the screen of his phone and puts it away, then scoots closer to Jack, puts a hand on the nape of Jack’s neck, his thumb stroking absentmindedly along the hairline. 

“I know you miss it,” Bitty says, like he hasn’t given up so much, like he didn’t pack up his life just to start over in a new country, mostly because Jack wanted to move back home. Jack will never be able to thank Bitty enough for that, for walking with Jack through everything to get to this place, still together after all this time. He knows he’s one of the lucky ones. 

“I think I always will, in a way,” Jack says, and he half-shrugs, half-leans into Bitty’s touch. “I asked dad about that once, and he said it never goes away. Never has, for him. But I’m happy to be here. With you.”

“Would you go back, though?” Bitty asks then, tugging Jack down until he curls up on the couch with his head in Bitty’s lap. Charlie whines in protest, then settles down behind Jack’s legs. “If they asked? Not to playing, of course, but back to the organization?”

Jack is quiet for a moment, then asks, “Would you want me to?” 

He feels guilty sometimes, for feeling like he’s uprooted both of them, but mostly Bitty, because for Jack, this was a homecoming, but for Bitty, it was anything but. And he knows Bitty is happy here, he knows that Montreal has become his second—third—home over the years, full of frequent visits, but this doesn’t mean the gnawing feeling that he fucked up somewhere along the way—that he didn’t do right by Bitty—doesn’t get to him sometimes.

Bitty slowly runs his fingers through the hair at Jack’s temples. 

“Of course I would,” he says, like it’s that simple. But the thing is—being with Bitty has always been the only easy thing in Jack’s life. 

So maybe it is that simple, after all.

.

They fly down to Georgia for Christmas this year, since they spent it with Jack’s parents in Montreal the year before, and Bitty drives them from the airport in their rental car. 

It’s always a little strange for Jack to see no snow on Christmas, but this time when they touch down in Atlanta, there’s more chill in the air than usual, and the sky is overcast. 

Over the years, Jack has gotten used to how many people spend Christmas Day at the Bittles’ house, and it doesn’t overwhelm him the way it used to in the beginning, so he gets to relax a little and watch Bitty play with his cousins’ kids; the oldest is five, the youngest—only eight months, and they all love Bitty. 

The best part of the evening, though, is when the Bittles leave to attend the midnight service, and it’s just the two of them in an empty house, the lights turned down low until it’s just the Christmas tree illuminating the room. Bitty gets them eggnog and pie, and they go outside to sit on the porch, breathing in the stillness of the world for a long while. 

“I’m so glad you’re here with me,” Bitty says, quiet and soft, with his head leaning against Jack’s shoulder. 

They have learned how to say _I love you_ in many different ways over the years, so Jack recognizes this admission for what it really is. 

“I’m glad to be here with you,” Jack says, and this, too, means _I love you_.

.

Jack gets the phone call from Georgia the day the Falconers clinch their playoffs spot. She was promoted to general manager right after he’d retired, and they don’t get to talk to each other a lot these days. 

“Have you considered coming to Providence for the first series?” she asks, and she’s known him for a long, long time, so Jack isn’t surprised when she says, “It would mean a lot to the guys.”

George has never been one for emotional manipulation. She just tells the truth, and when it comes to Jack, the truth is usually enough to convince him, or at least make him listen. 

The thing is—he’s thought about it. He’s considered it. He still doesn’t know if he’s ready to step inside the TLA and breathe in the smell of home ice. He doesn’t say any of that.

Instead, he says, “I’ll get back to you, okay?”

George laughs quietly into the phone. “Sure, Jack,” she says, and there’s the sound of a pen scratching on paper. It’s late, but she’s probably still at the office, the phone pressed between her shoulder and her cheek while she works. Jack had knocked on her door enough times to find her elbows-deep in paperwork late in the evening that he can picture it vividly in his mind. “Just promise me you’ll think about it, okay?”

“You should go,” Bitty says behind Jack’s back as soon as Jack puts the phone away, and when he spins in the desk chair, he sees Bitty standing in the doorway, leaning against the wall with his shoulder. “It’s their first playoffs without you, and there’s no one on that team who remembers what it was like before you signed on. And I know you miss them. They must miss you, too.”

It still amazes Jack sometimes, how Bitty is capable of making anything seem easy, how he’s capable of cutting right through the complicated web of feelings tangled inside of Jack’s chest and making sense of it all.

“I thought about it,” he admits, because Bitty deserves nothing less than the full truth. “But I don’t know if I’m ready to go back. You know they want me back more permanently, and I don’t— I don’t know if I’m ready for that, either. Besides, it hasn’t been even a year since we moved. Would you even want to go back?”

Bitty crosses the room in a few quick strides and moves to straddle Jack in the chair as his arms find their way around Jack’s neck. 

“I really, _really_ don’t care where we live,” he says, looking down at Jack. “I love living with you here in Montreal, but I loved living with you in Providence, too. So I hope you see what the common denominator really is, Mr. Zimmermann.”

He grins then, and leans down to kiss Jack, his hands in Jack’s hair, tugging lightly.

“Okay, then,” Jack says, and Bitty presses their foreheads together. 

“Okay.”

.

Two days before they leave for Providence, Bitty joins Jack at the rink for a morning skate. He has his figure skates on, and he warms up on the other side of the rink, by the boards. 

It’s another thing Jack never gets tired of—watching Bitty spin and jump, and glide across the surface of the ice with more grace in his little finger than Jack has in his entire body. He knows how to move and how to make his body work for him, and people have always said that Jack is an excellent skater, his technique impeccable. But there’s all that, and then there’s what _Bitty_ can do on the ice, elegant and seemingly feather-light, like nothing can touch him. 

Sometimes he imagines a different life in which neither of them went to Samwell; he imagines them meeting at the Olympic Village, representing two different countries in two different disciplines, and who knows, maybe they would find each other anyway, and maybe they would be completely different people.

Jack knows it’s been a hard and winding road that brought him here, to this moment, and there has been a lot of hardship and pain in his life, but for all of this, he wouldn’t change a thing. 

And maybe it’s just the prospect of going back that makes him soft and nostalgic, but the truth is, Jack doesn’t know how to be anything other than soft with Bitty.

(There was a time when it wasn’t true, and Jack has no way of going back and undoing all of it, smothering the harshness in his voice, but he wants to be better than that.)

Jack skates lazy circles around the ice for a while as Bitty finishes stretching; then, Bitty speeds across the rink until he bumps into Jack from behind, wrapping his hands around Jack’s waist and pressing his cheek into the space between Jack’s shoulder blades. 

When Jack turns around, Bitty is smiling. 

“Race you?” he asks, and then takes off, not waiting for Jack to answer. 

Jack catches up to him, but only barely, and he pulls Bitty along, pushed forward by the momentum as they hold hands. 

“Can’t keep up, Mr. Zimmermann?” Bitty teases, turning effortlessly and skating backwards around the edge of the rink. 

Jack laughs. “Sometimes I forget how fast you are.”

Bitty looks up at him and there’s impossible fondness in his eyes. Sometimes Jack still wonders what he did to deserve all that, but it comes so easily for Bitty, the softness and the warmth, in a way that doesn’t come easily for Jack. Jack has to work at it. Bitty just _is_.

“Well,” Bitty says after a beat, still smiling and looking at Jack in a way that always makes it easier to breathe, “then it’s a good thing I’m here to remind you, right?”

.

It feels like it’s been ages since they left Providence, and coming back is at the same time comforting and strange. It still feels like coming home, but this time, there’s the weight of memories and the history of shared lives settling on their shoulders, and the knowledge that they had to leave it all behind and move on. 

There is a lot of happiness still inside these walls, echoes of a life well-lived, memories of first kisses and first times, and first nights spent together, with the realization that they fit around each other’s bodies as easily as they fit around each other’s hearts.

Jack doesn’t regret coming back; he’d been happy here, the happiest he has been in years, and as soon as they close the front door behind them, Jack turns around and presses Bitty against the door, kisses him softly. 

“Hi,” he says, then kisses him again, and it’s like another memory from another time. He used to do that, before Bitty graduated and moved in, in that year they spent apart more than they spent it together, whenever Bitty would visit on the weekend. 

Bitty smiles. “Hi,” he says back, then pushes up on his tiptoes to press his lips to Jack’s mouth.

They leave their bags in the bedroom and uncover the furniture, folding the huge white sheets as they go, until the apartment doesn’t look like it hasn’t been lived-in in almost a year anymore. 

Last April, Jack was still walking on crutches and getting frustrated with physio, slowly getting used to the idea that he would never play again. He was there for the home games and off the roster for the away games, and the Falconers made it all the way to the finals only to lose in game seven to the Aces. Jack went out onto the ice to shake hands with Kent, after, still the captain of the Providence Falconers, if in name only, and Kent hugged him until Jack was almost breathless with it, or maybe it was for a different reason entirely.

It hurt, back then, in a way not many things in Jack’s life ever had.

Now, it’s just a dull ache somewhere deep inside his chest, but it doesn’t threaten to choke him every time he thinks about the feeling of sinking the puck into the net, the scent of ice and the sharp bite of it against bare skin.

“Ready?” Bitty asks, gently touching Jack’s arm, his fingers warm and sure. He presses the car keys into Jack’s palm. 

Jack takes a deep breath. 

“Ready.”

.

The rink is empty.

The rink is empty, the surface of the ice pristine, untouched, and Jack can see his jersey up in the rafters, his name and his number across a stretch of fabric. It’s such a small thing but also, in a way, it’s everything. 

Jack left a lot of himself on this ice, gave a lot of himself away to this team, this sport, this life. 

Now, it’s almost like coming back full circle. 

And through all of that, Bitty has always been there for Jack. It’s an impossible debt to repay. 

He’s here now, too, standing to Jack’s right, their fingers tangled together as Jack looks out onto the home ice, in a city that was his second home for the longest time. 

Jack has no idea where their home is now. Maybe they will go back to Montreal once playoffs are over. Maybe they will stay in Providence, now that Jack has healed enough that he can be around hockey without hurting. Maybe it’s possible to be at home in more than one place. 

But wherever they end up, they will be all right. That’s the most important thing.


End file.
